putting out fire with gasoline
by blossom in ribcage
Summary: Sin is a slow and destructive game. They both lose.
1. pride

"You're a fucking idiot."

"Thanks, Timmy. Last words I hear from you before my wounds kill me— 'you're a fucking idiot _.'"_ He props his head up on the pillows and flashes you a sharp-toothed grin, unchanged from the night you cracked three of his ribs, except for the mass of bandages cocooning his arm. Of course _he_ decided to play with fire. Of course _he_ got burned and learned nothing.

"Winston, you ain't never gonna fuckin' die," you say with the certainty of Moses delivering the Ten Commandments. "God'll take one look at you and spit you right back out."

He considers that, biting the corner of his lip until it bleeds. "Damn straight."

You flip through the newspaper you stole from a convenience store on the way here— they chose a solid picture of him, some school ID snapped in his freshman year, not the mugshot you were expecting. (Much wider selection of mugshots. Just saying.) "Speakin' of which, can't believe this gem ain't got 'wanted dead or alive' written under it. Like bein' a hero now, tough guy?"

"You just come here to flap your jaws?" he asks, rolling his eyes up at the ceiling and letting them hang back in his skull. He looks like a caged animal; he doesn't belong in this hospital room, with a backdrop of wires and ice chips and neat plastic meal trays. There's a new form of anarchy in every muscle he twitches here, lying still against clean sheets.

"Nah. Came here to say it's a _damn_ shame you're gonna miss out on the rumble tonight. Maybe you can watch a Leave It to Beaver rerun instead or somethin'."

"Shut your goddamn whore mouth, Shepard, or I'mma call up hospital security and let 'em bounce you like a pogo stick," he snaps, his bottom lip sticking out further than Angela's when she doesn't get her way. "Quit rubbin' it in."

You love pushing, shoving, prodding the edges of his pride and seeing where it collapses. You love when he's down on his knees. "Can't do it yourself, crip?"

He gives his IV a few experimental tugs, and when it proves hard to pull out, throws a Reader's Digest at your head and misses spectacularly. "If I wasn't hooked up to this shit, you'd be spewin' blood an' teeth all over the floor. One more word—"

You get up and kiss him, tasting the bright copper from his torn lip; he reaches up with his good arm and grabs a fistful of your hair, pulling you onto him, trying to devour you. He won't succeed. You'll eat him whole first, because you don't know who you'd be if you let yourself lose, even to Dallas fucking Winston. "You wanna beat the hell outta someone," you say once your lungs have no more air, "make it a Soc."

One spark and the entire powder keg goes off. "Don't worry, I'll be there," he says grimly, tugging at his IV again. "Gimme your switch. Bastards stole mine when they checked me into this joint."

"Not a fuckin' chance," you say, unable to wipe the smirk off your face. "That'd be makin' it way too easy on you."

His stream of curses follows you all the way out the door.


	2. lust

"You gotta do it fast," Tim said, tightening the tourniquet around your arm until the rubber bit into your skin. He held up the syringe like he'd handled one many, many times before, even though the wisdom goes: never use your own product. "Don't think about it."

You're fifteen, and you've sold more of this shit than you care to remember, but you hadn't ever shot up before. You didn't look away as the needle plunged in and your synapses blew straight out, drool hanging from the corner of your mouth, and then the whole world became sunlight, bright and painless.

"That wasn't speed," you say on the floor of the abandoned church when you come to, your voice barely escaping your tight, dry throat. "What the hell— what the hell was that, man?" You try to sit up, but a wave of nausea brings you back down to the ground; you don't see gold anymore, just black spots, blinding you.

"Smack," he says easily, his eyes as clear as ever. He pulls out his switchblade and starts stabbing between his splayed fingers, a game you played when you were kids. He doesn't miss. "You oughta try it more often. Only thing that shuts you up for a change."

Smack— _heroin_. Hair strewn behind her, jaw broken, blood from her cracked skull spreading out on the linoleum. You were too young to know you should scream.

"I don't _do_ smack." You force your prone limbs to obey you, feeling like you're wading through molasses. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me what it was?"

"Well, you did." He leans back on his elbows, revealing a taut strip of skin on his torso— that asshole, so confident in his own safety that he'll flash throat whenever he pleases— and laughs. "Can't believe you just took whatever I gave you, if you're so damn picky. You really trust me that much?"

There's a lot of reasons for why you punch him in the face. 1. you simultaneously revile and pity and maybe even love your strange, ashen mother, who never sang you lullabies and let you toy with empty syringes while perched on her lap. 2. you don't trust anyone, you didn't miscalculate. 3. violence— that's what brings the lightning to your blood, not fucking Tim Shepard's smirk bringing up the scarred part of his cheek or Tim Shepard's long-fingered, callused hands or Tim Shepard's— fuck, no, haven't you had enough without being a queer, too?

"You want it like that?" he pants, recovering from the blow fast enough to drive an elbow into your stomach, and after that you roll around on the floor like clawing cats, fighting for something you can't name. And, God, you pummel him as though you're trying to scourge your sin on his body— but then the older, taller boy pins you and very very quickly throws his lips up against yours.

It takes you a moment to realize that you're actually kissing him, wetter and clumsier and more desperate than you expected— your cold war turning hot in a split second. Your head is so loud as he reaches up your shirt. There is drowning in your ears as you grasp between his legs.

You break apart, eventually. Dazed, you turn your head away— clamber to your feet, wiping the dust off your prized leather jacket. Don't look at him, because if you do, search for a hint of softness in his features, it's game over.

"This didn't happen, Winston," Tim says slowly and shakily, convincing himself more than you. His hand is in his pocket, on top of his switchblade, and there are ropes of dark hair flopping in front of his face— all one big curtain he's not going to allow you to penetrate. "I'm not a faggot. _This didn't happen_. You understand?"

"This didn't happen," you echo, examining the needles littering the pews. Your head still throbs with its own heartbeat. "You tell anyone, I'll cut your fucking tongue out."

(Everyone knows that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut.)


End file.
